#sigh RT @dmataconis: Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin Draw Large Crowd To Lincoln Memorial http://bit.ly/9JvpFM RT @gahrie: @brendanloy The people at the rally today are tired of being ignored and insulted by the coastal elites and the politcial class .@gahrie Problem is, they’d replace tyranny of technocratic “elites” w/ tyranny of common-man gut instincts, disdaining expertise/knowledge.
They didn’t post because they were @replies, but here are my follow-up tweets to gahrie (combined into a paragraph instead of having ellipses breaking them up, abbreviations lengthened, etc.):
I feel a good bit of the Tea Party’s anger. I just disagree with their solution, such as it is. The elites have indeed screwed up quite badly over the last several decades, largely IMHO due to excessive pandering/marketing to average voters’ short-sighted “have your cake & eat it too” tendencies. I don’t see the solution being to elevate those same pandered-to average voters to power. When the Tea Party starts sounding less like a barely informed, unfocused angry rant and more like a movement with real proposals to put America on a sustainable path, then we can talk. For now, I see it as a symptom of America’s illness, not a cure. I see nothing that suggests the Tea Party will be a force backing the wrenching, politically poisonous choices we must soon make. If they prove me wrong, I’ll be delighted. The test will come in second half of Obama’s term, and the term after that, whoever’s president.
My reply to your reply was:
What makes Harry Reid, Barak Obama, or Nancy Pelosi any better suited to lead us than Joe the plumber? Could he really have done worse?
give me WFB’s phone book over our current ruling class anyday…….
Education can’t be that important…the polticians aren’t even reading the bills they vote on let alone write them..or even name them…
and I would add…maybe we need some common-man gut instincts (what many of us would call commonsense) to rein in the corruption and empire building of the bureaucrats and political class…….
Didn’t mean to exclude your replies, but you didn’t send them “@” me, so I didn’t see them till now.
In any case, I stand by what I said, which your response doesn’t really address so much as talk past (though admittedly, we fundamentally disagree about our diagnosis of the problem to such an extent that that’s probably inevitable). Again, I believe the principal reason the “elites” have so overwhelmingly failed in recent decades is because they’ve largely given up trying to be “leaders,” which involves “leadership,” i.e., sometimes telling people things they don’t want to hear, or convincing them of things they don’t already believe — and are instead almost purely pandering to the masses, telling us what we want to hear and feeding us what we already believe. We’re told we can have our cake & eat it too, and we’ve become addicted to that message, and refuse to elect anyone who deviates from it.
The solution to that problem — if there is one — isn’t to give up on having “elites” altogether, and simply have government of the unwashed masses, by the unwashed masses, for the unwashed masses. Joe the Plumber isn’t part of the solution; he’s part of the problem. It’s the elites’ excessive pandering to guys like Joe, who don’t really know anything about complex policy issues, but erroneously think their “common sense folksy wisdom” is the solution (IT’S NOT; pretending complicated, nuanced problems are simple and unnuanced doesn’t solve them, it just makes you feel better), and who believe that anyone who actually understands the nuances of an issue is an “elite” talking down to him, that has gotten us in this mess (broadly speaking). Electing Joe, or a candidate who makes every effort to not just pander to Joe but to actually be as Joe-like as possible (*cough*Palin*cough*), will cut out the middleman, but certainly won’t improve anything. Indeed, it will make things worse, because even excessively pandering elites have the capability of making tough, unpopular, “right thing to do” choices now and then (though they do it more and more rarely), because they actually know better, whereas Joe (and, I fear, Palin) doesn’t; they aren’t just condescending to the Common Man, they ARE the Common Man, and they actually think their instinctive, “I don’t blink,” proudly uninformed choices are some form of “wisdom.” They’re not.
By the way…notwithstanding all of the above, I *DO* think there is a need for common sense in government, and that it is indeed sometimes lacking. But the Tea Party crowd would throw out the baby with the bathwater. It isn’t just that they don’t automatically regard education, knowledge and expertise as inherent proof of wisdom or correctness (if that was all, it would be laudable; healthy skepticism of “elites” is a good thing), it’s that they regard it as a DISQUALIFICATION, that anyone who is an “expert,” or too highly “educated,” or talks in a way that sounds like high-filutin’ nuance, should automatically be discounted. What we need is a healthy blend of expertise and common sense. The Tea Party crowd does not offer that.
Now, again, if the Tea Party, or some portion thereof, eventually starts advocating for sensible, difficult, fact-based, and in many cases politically unpopular steps to put this country on a more sustainable path, I’ll be thrilled, and I might just go buy a Don’t Tread On Me flag myself and join the party. But what I see right now is a movement that thinks the problem is “socialism” and the solution is to simply undo everything Obama’s doing (because we were doing so well in 2008? and our outlook was so awesome?), and, uh, cut “pork” and “waste,” plus all those government programs that OTHER people abuse, but don’t you dare touch any of the government programs that *I* depend on, because those are the ones we NEED. It’s sound and fury signifying nothing, or less than nothing, from what I’m seeing. I hope I’m wrong because this country NEEDS a grassroots force to move us in a better direction, away from the tyranny of the have-your-cake-and-eat-it-to pandering of both parties, and the ideological blinder-based, watered-down-to-avoid-unpopularity “solutions” of both Left and Right. But I honestly don’t think the Tea Party is it.
they’ve largely given up trying to be “leaders,” which involves “leadership,” i.e., sometimes telling people things they don’t want to hear, or convincing them of things they don’t already believe — and are instead almost purely pandering to the masses
Really?
Aren’t Pres. Obama’s and the Democrats’ problems directly a result of trying to push ideas and “solutions” on the American people that they don’t want and haven’t worked?
The Tea Parties and the “common-man” understand “complex policy issues” very well. Uneducated does not equal stupid. The American people are smart enough to realize that the solution we need is to slash government spending and the size of government.
Since you evidently believe in a ruling elite..where should it come from?
The Ivy League? Political dynasties?
What spending? What government programs? You realize that two-thirds of federal spending is on Social Security, Medicare, defense & debt service, right? You can’t “slash” it effectively just by cutting “waste,” “pork,” and social welfare programs for poor people. What is the Tea Party solution that will reform our entitlement programs and cut down our bloated military-industrial complex? I realize the movement is too diffuse to have a single platform, and I don’t mean to make unfair demands in that regard; it’s a protest movement, not a political party, I get that. But the whole thrust seems to be unfocused rants about how Obama is screwing everything up (NEWS FLASH: THINGS WERE VERY, VERY SCREWED UP LONG BEFORE OBAMA CAME TO POWER, and many of the issues we’re seeing now are simply the chickens coming home to roost on long-simmering problems — if you don’t get that, then no, you DON’T understand complex policy issues), and does not seem focused in, dare I say it, a Perot-like way, on actually getting at the root of the problem.
Since you evidently believe in a ruling elite..where should it come from?
The Ivy League? Political dynasties?
I believe in a meritocratic elite, elected by the people. I don’t care where their degrees are from, but I do want them to have a degree of acquired knowledge, not prideful ignorance. It is certainly an absolute prerequisite that a leader demonstrate a reasonably sophisticated understanding of the complex issues our advanced society faces — and also a willingness to swallow your pride, when necessary, and consult people with more knowledge and expertise, from a variety of backgrounds and perspectives, in order to reach an informed decision, rather than purely making “gut” choices without “blinking.”
Unfortunately, the success of such a system depends on the people being willing and able to make choices in the country’s long-term interest, rather than be swayed by demagogues of both sides who convince them that they can have all gain and no pain, all the time, and distract them from real problems by scapeogating others (bankers, immigrants, Democrats, Republicans, Muslims, “Christianists”, Ivy League grads, “Teabaggers”, the “Lamestream Media”, whomever). The people have long since given up on making choices this way — the politicians have gotten way too good at pandering to us instead, and we’re way too willing to believe their lies rather than demanding hard truths. It’s the elites’ fault, but it’s also OUR fault. I’m afraid I don’t see a solution.
bloated military-industrial complex?
Identify the bloat in our defense spending. I think in fact the Obama administration has cut too deep into programs meeting our future needs.
I have said much of this before….
1) I would immediately cut all farm and corporate subsidies.
2) I would reform the tax code, mandating that it be no more than 100 double spaced pages long. No more exemptions, no more deductions, no more transfer payments pretending to be refunds. A simple set of flat rates, ranging from say 5% that EVERYONE pays to 30-35% at the top end. The IRS is completely re-organized, downsized and forced to treat the American people better.
3) Obamacare repealed, medicare reformed.
4) Social Security….age you begin to receive benefits raised to at least 65. Begin means testing it. Reduce the COLA adjustments.
5) Cut foreign aid (except emergency services) by at least 50%, including payments to the U.N.
6) Set a real spending cap…no rise in government spending for the next two years, renewed at least twice by succeeding congresses.
7) Sunset provisions in every new spending bill.
8) Development of our natural resources, as a source of revenue and as a national security issue.
By the way, re: “a meritocratic elite, elected by the people” … this is PRECISELY what the Founding Fathers, who the Tea Partiers constantly invoke, believed in. They would have been horrified by the Boston Phone Book notion. Now, that doesn’t make it wrong, but it’s just be clear. We’re a democratic republic, not a democracy, for a reason. I’d say it’s a good reason. Tyranny of the majority is a real thing, and so is tyranny of the ignorant.
As for this…
Aren’t Pres. Obama’s and the Democrats’ problems directly a result of trying to push ideas and “solutions” on the American people that they don’t want and haven’t worked?
I’ll ignore the “haven’t worked,” since it’s obviously manifestly ridiculous to claim that something like ObamaCare, which is primarily not even in effect yet, and the just-passed financial reform, “haven’t worked.” We can argue about the stimulus, though I think the jury is pretty clearly still at least partially out on that, too. In any case, it does not, by any stretch of the imagination, disprove my point to note that the Democrats are unpopular because they’re pushing ideas that “the American people…don’t want.” The American people DON’T WANT ANYTHING THAT CAUSES THEM TO SUFFER ANY DEGREE OF SHORT-TERM PAIN, even though we manifestly NEED lots of such things — I’m not asking you to agree with “liberal” solutions to our problems, but if your test for whether something is a good solution is whether it, on the surface, before its actual long-term results can be seen, and without an effective communications campaign to convince the public of its merits (this administration has, shockingly, been WOEFULLY inadequate at that), is popular… well, we’re talking past each other again. It take it as a GIVEN that the next decade is going to either see: a) a lot of unpopular policies passed, but somebody or other, or b) America become Greece, or worse. If you think the Tea Party is going to be helpful in seeing that a), rather than b), is what happens, well, again, I hope you’re right, but I don’t think so, and your comments re-confirm my belief in that regard.
It is certainly an absolute prerequisite that a leader demonstrate a reasonably sophisticated understanding of the complex issues our advanced society faces
Why?
These people are not reading the bills, writing the bills or even writing their speeches. They are anchormen parroting the copy off of the teleprompter. All of the real work is done by their staff…a nameless, faceless ruling elite who stay in Washington D.C. for most of their lives, sliding from job to job. I would argue that they are in fact not leaders, they are slaves to the system…and what we actually need are outsiders to break the system up.
OBAMA HAS NOT CUT DEFENSE SPENDING. He has merely slowed its rate of increase. This is treated in popular discourse as a “cut.” You have been lied to, and you believe the lie. This is a hallmark of the very sort of thing I’m talking about.
The fact that you believe defense spending NOT ONLY must not be cut, but in fact must keep increasing at an ever faster rate, in order to “meet our future needs,” is Game, Set, Match demonstrating my point. Regardless of your ideological predisposition on military matters (and you know I’m not some sort of hippie dove), WE CANNOT AFFORD to continue to have such an expansive definition of “needs.”
If military spending is off-limits, then it’s over, we’re done, end of discussion, the nation’s fiscal health is doomed. NOTHING CAN BE OFF-LIMITS
If military spending is off-limits, then it’s over, we’re done, end of discussion, the nation’s fiscal health is doomed. NOTHING CAN BE OFF-LIMITS
You do realize that national defense is one of the few things the federal government is actually supposed to do right?
P.S. Your proposed reform of the tax code, in order to be relevant to the problem we’re talking about, needs to result in a net increase in federal revenue — i.e., a TAX INCREASE!!!1!!!. You think the Tea Party is going to support that? You think a single Republican, or Blue Dog Democrat, is going to vote for it?
Likewise means-testing Social Security… why, that sounds like REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH!!!1!! Rewarding irresponsible behavior! Making those who made financially sound choices pay for the security of those who didn’t! It becomes a welfare program! #PANIC! You think the Tea Party is going to rally around that?
“Medicare reformed” is too nebulous to be meaningful. If you just mean cut down on “waste,” that’s nice, but isn’t nearly enough. Medicare is the elephant in the room. I don’t know what the solution is, but just talismanically saying the word “reform” certainly isn’t going to fi it.
Foreign aid is miniscule. Irrelevant to the discussion.
Saying the word “spending cap” is meaningless without talking about what programs you mean to cut when revenues fall (or not allow to expand to keep pace with inflation, etc). That’s shirking the hard choices, not making them. Who makes those choices? Do we leave it to bureaucrats? Or do we pass an OMG 1,000 PAGE BILL!!!! that details every cut? If the latter, again, what gets cut? Saying “spending cap” or “spending freeze” is like saying “deficit commission,” it makes you feel good about yourself but doesn’t really amount to a substantive proposal that gets at the core of the issue.
The rest of your proposal is nice (sunset provisions, drill baby drill) but doesn’t really put forward anything that actually has an immediate, obvious fiscal impact.
In short, you’ve proposed nothing in the way of serious budget cuts that there’s a chance in hell the Tea Party, or the Republican Party, would support. You’re further along the road to fiscal sanity than them, and I give you credit for that. But you’re not disproving my point.
You do realize that national defense is one of the few things the federal government is actually supposed to do right?
That’s a loaded question, of course. Different people have different conceptions of what the federal government is “supposed to do.” But regardless of that, I’m obviously not saying we should dismantle the Pentagon and cease having an Army or a Navy. The fact that something is a core governmental function doesn’t mean the government can’t even consider any cuts on it. We cannot afford to continue operating the way we have, in ANY facet of government functions. If you’re unwilling to even look at sensible military cuts, then you’re part of the problem, not part of the solution, period.
Hey, at least gahrie gives us something to work with! 🙂
Let me say this, though: our defense spending needs cutting. Badly. We pay way too many contractors to do work for us. These charge overhead in addition to paying higher salaries to their employees. Plus, we are paying for a military that is way too big for our needs, and we get it into wars because we need to do something with our expensive toy.
I know of what I speak of. I am one of those contractors. I had the following choice at some point: stay in the government, with no overhead, for a lower salary, or take the better offer from a contractor. I took the offer. I still work for contractors. I could have cost the government a lot less if they had given me a competitive wage! But their structure was too ossified, so I went with contractors. They are throwing more money at the same people because of their use of contractors!
Hey, at least gahrie gives us something to work with! 🙂
Agreed; as I said, gahrie is light years ahead of the Tea Party and Republicans as a whole — he’s proposing a increase in federal revenue, a.k.a. a “tax hike” (at least I presume he is, since otherwise I don’t know why he bothered to include his tax-code reform in a deficit reduction proposal) and means-testing Social Security, both of which are (or would be, once adequately demagogued) total anathema to his ideological allies.
Gahrie’s bullet-point list is a decent starting point. We need much more — including, as you say, defense cuts — but it’s a start. My point, though, was that the Tea Party isn’t a serious force for moving us in the right direction fiscally, and gahrie’s list doesn’t do anything to disprove that.
Did you even bother to search your comments G? Retirement age is 67 for all those born 1960 or after. In case you have a problem with math that’s two years older than you suggest it should be.
Also had we never invaded Iraq or Afghanistan we would have saved several trillion dollars so I think taking a good look at the military as a place sot start cutting makes a lot of sense.
Also, benefits are adjusted if you continue to work post retirement age, in other words, means tested.
Did you even bother to search your comments G? Retirement age is 67 for all those born 1960 or after. In case you have a problem with math that’s two years older than you suggest it should be.
So that’s 17 more years of people retiring at 62 like my parents did…..
Also had we never invaded Iraq or Afghanistan we would have saved several trillion dollars
Just how much do you think we have spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, and where do you get your numbers?
Also, benefits are adjusted if you continue to work post retirement age, in other words, means tested.
I mean means tested so that Pres. Obama, Warren Buffet and Susan Sarandon never collect Social Security.
We’re a democratic republic, not a democracy, for a reason. I’d say it’s a good reason.
So you’ll join me in calling for a repeal of the 17th Amendment?
It’s pretty sad to think that people would prefer Joe the Plumber, who they describe as not really knowing anything, to hold public office over someone with at least a college education. I think Gahrie goes on to illustrate exactly why informed people ought to be in office over somoene like… well Gahrie.
You send a moron like Joe the Plumber to the Senate or Congress and he’ll just get eaten alive by the senior sharks in that house and he’ll make his district completely irrelevant. The retirement age will be 75 by the time our current college aged Americans reach their golden years. The Government says the Iraq war has cost over $1 trillion currently, but that number is BS because it only counts the spending approved by congress 8 months AFTER the war started. And it was the biggest waste of money and humanity of the last 10 years.
I watched as much of the Beck rally as I could today, and it really seemed like a pointless event of various people talking about how great (certain) Americans are and how jacked up the government is. It’s too bad that they only noticed how jacked up the government was when a black guy became president. They don’t know Bush is the guy who signed the TARP bailouts at $1.5 billion with no oversight in November 2008. They don’t know that none of Obama’s initiatives (“Obamacare”, Cap and Trade, etc.) have not even gone into effect yet. They don’t know that they have paid less taxes this year and last year than ANY year under Bush. They don’t know it took a decade of lending and banking de-regulation and irresponsible craziness to put this country in the mess it’s in today and it will take more than 18 months to turn it all around. Basically the gathering of uninformed nimrods that Gahrie would like to see in office are probably barely able to keep their rented furniture from getting repo’ed out of their double-wides, forget about them holding office.
“I mean means tested so that Pres. Obama, Warren Buffet and Susan Sarandon never collect Social Security.”
Why not? They paid into it right? Oh wait, you are talking about redistribution of wealth, you socialist! Why do you hate America!?!? Socialism makes Glenn Beck cry!!
Incidentally recognizing that we are a Democratic Republic doesn’t actually lead to repealing the 17th Amendment, but hey whatever floats your boat…
Yet the oiks’ vision of themselves as an intellectual aristocracy violates the first American principle ever articulated: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . .”
This cannot be reconciled with the elitist notion that most men are economically insecure bitter clinging intolerant bigots who need to be governed by an educated elite. Marxism Lite is not only false; it is, according to the American creed, self-evidently false. That is why the liberal elite finds Americans revolting.
As they say…read the whole thing:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704147804575455523068802824.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion
Incidentally recognizing that we are a Democratic Republic doesn’t actually lead to repealing the 17th Amendment, but hey whatever floats your boat…
It does if you think the republic part is more important than the democratic part, which I am asking if Brendan does……
I think a much bigger problem than the “ignorant masses” is people who have learned to vote themselves public money. I propose two solutions:
1) End all farm and corporate subsidies and reform welfare.
2) Only award the franchise to people who :
A) Pay a minimum of 5% taxes. No deductions, no credits, straight up 5% of gross income.
B) Pay more money to the government than they receive from the government other than as payment for legitimate goods and services.
3) Public employee unions are prohibited from hiring lobbyists or contributing to political campaigns.
OK..that was three…..
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
“Our two weapons are fear and surprise…and ruthless efficiency!….”
Any thoughts on the Koch backing for the Tea Partiers? The recent New Yorker piece, coupled with Frank Rich’s book report on it, are pushing this meme that Tea Partiers are those stupid enough to back the insane agendas of crazy billionaires.
To get a modern political movement, you need money to talk and people to listen. I think the second part of that equation applies some modest filter of reason to political ideas. IE, people get behind the ideas of crazy billionaires because some portion of those ideas has personal resonance.
I find a parallel between the “Tea Party for Billionaires” critique and the incredulity of (mainly Dem) politicians who are like, “What? 2/3rds of America opposes the Ground Zero mosque, despite our huffy liberal endorsements of it? They must have been manipulated into believing it by an evil cynical political agenda of corporations and such!”
Political money talks, sure, but people have to listen for it to have an effect. The Tea Partiers were there without Koch, just as the Perotnistas (or Reform Partiers, if you prefer) were there without Perot. Some portion of America has deeply hated our political system for a long time, and that’s flaring now. Politicians who cater to that will reap a windfall, and those who ignore it will… ummm… get windfallen.
(end ramble)
1) What if ending farm subsidies puts farmers out of business? I guess we’ll get the rest of our fruits and veggies from Mexico where there isn’t so much regulation.
3)But big corporations can continue to hire lobbyists and have no limit on political contributions and run the government, as they are doing today, and even moreso since the Supreme Court’s ruling earlier this year?
What if ending farm subsidies puts farmers out of business? I guess we’ll get the rest of our fruits and veggies from Mexico where there isn’t so much regulation.
You really are batshit crazy aren’t you? Most of our farm subsidies go to pay people not to grow/raise food and crops. The rest go to large agri-business concerns.
)But big corporations can continue to hire lobbyists and have no limit on political contributions and run the government, as they are doing today, and even moreso since the Supreme Court’s ruling earlier this year?
LEARN TO READ! I said public employee unions should no longer hire lobbyists or contribute to campaigns, not all unions.
Hell I used to say public employee unions should be illegal…….
Most Farmers aren’t making a lot of money, and I’ll leave it at that. Also you’re stupid and don’t know what you’re talking about if you honestly thinking that going after Farms is the place to start gutting the country.
I don’t know what I didn’t know how to read. I don’t like government employees, but I’d certainly rather be paying them than giving private corporations zillions of dollars in tax benefits because they have such a strong lobby, so their board can get $100 million in bonuses in December. That’s where to start.
I’d certainly rather be paying them than giving private corporations zillions of dollars in tax benefits</i.
So you skipped right over that part of my post too…….
Would I rather be rulled by Joe the Plumber or Obama? The answer is, neither. I want to be rulled by whomever is wise enough to realize the limits of human knowledge and understanding as it relates to the human condition, and who thus concludes that centralized “ruling” should be kept to a minimum. The elites really know a lot less than they claim that they know, and a little knowledge coupled with an arrogant attitude is often more dangerous than no knowledge coupled with the humility to admit it.
gahrie, although I cannot cite a specific example of waste and fraud within defense spending, it would seem implausible that there isn’t just as much waste and fraud at the DoD as there is at HHS or the HUD. As conservatives, we generally take it as an article of faith that most government bureaucracies contain massive amounts of waste because that’s what tends to happen when you’re playing with someone else’s money and the people who care most about what you’re doing are the beneficiaries of the potential waste.
Brendan, you are correct that the Tea Party doesn’t really have any solutions per say, but it’s important to note that Tea Party isn’t a political party, nor is it a unified organization in the mold of the NRA or NARAL. By their own admission, they are a loose confederation of activists who operate under the Tea Party banner and who share libertarian leanings, but they do not, in any true sense, have a common platform or plan of action. In some sense, they are like the American revolutionaries: there was a broad agreement of what the revolting colonists didn’t want (rule by Britain), but limited agreement what they wanted to replace the existing political structure.
Cartman, Here’s some examples of fraude and profiteering. Halliburton/KBR bills the US government 50 dollars per load of laundry done in a laundry machine that they provide that costs 50 cents to operate in America. Haliburton/KBR provides coca-cola to US soldiers that they buy locally in Iraq for pennies and bill the US government 5 dollars per can. Haliburton/KBR has the US military explode vehicles government officials use for short periods of time so they can bill the US government to buy replacement vehicles at an outrageous price.
http://motherjones.com/transition/inter.php?dest=http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/04/feds-sue-kbr-over-iraq-bills-blackwater-fraud-waste-abuse-private-security
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/01/06/the_new_sophists_108447.html
“Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depositary of the public interests. In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves. Call them, therefore, Liberals and Serviles, Jacobins and Ultras, Whigs and Tories, Republicans and Federalists, Aristocrats and Democrats, or by whatever name you please, they are the same parties still and pursue the same object. The last one of Aristocrats and Democrats is the true one expressing the essence of all.”
– Thomas Jefferson (Letter to Henry Lee, 1824)
http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/2011/01/22/the-real-political-parties/
How sad would Jefferson be to see a party Called the Democrats to be in favor of an Aristocracy of the elite?